DIVORCE LAW LAGS

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 18 September 1934, Page 7

DIVORCE LAW LAGS

| POSITION OF WOMEN ■ ‘ ‘ HUSBAND ’ S RIGHTS—NONE ’ ’ CHANGES IN RECENT YEARS. ’ ■ The opinion that perhaps, now that women have insisted, on equality with men in so many ways, they should recognise as gallantry on tile part of men .the fact that they do not insist on women’s independence of them when divorced was expressed by Mr C. A. L. Treadwell in an address on the economic position of women and children under the New Zealand divorce and maintenance laws to the Women’s Service Guild, Wellington, yesterday. Mr Treadwell said that to understand the divorce laws it was necessary to realise the modern position of women. The law lagged behind for their benefit and did not take into full account their emancipation. Trie. responsibilities for providing for innocent divorced women and children were not .much different from what they were thirty years ago. Following a description of the change in women’s' domestic position since the middle ages and the effect of bringing women into industrial occupations that the industrial revolution bad had. Sir Treadwell remarked that the disparity in remuneration between men and women of former times bad to some extent disappeared. Female labour was not necessarily (bad for a country for all the work of a community to be done by means of a smaller number of families.

WOMEN’S AND MEN’S RIGHTS. “You may think that the married oman, and to some extent the ivorced woman, is the spoilt child f the law,” said Mr Treadwell. “In Yoman and Society, 1929,” Mr Merck Booth sums up the position m lose words: ‘Wife’vs Rights—The ght of maintenance. The right to ork outside the home, even against ic wish of the husband. The right to ?termine the place of her residence, lie right to invite her friends to her nne and entertain them at her husmd’s expense. The right, to accept • refuse motherhood. The right to 'legate the housework to servants, ho must, of course, he paid by the isbantl. The right of complete self issession. Husband’s Rights—None.’ r Fi Parry puts it in this way ; low that woman i;s legally on her vn, it is both degrading; to her atus as well as unjust that she lould maintain the legal privileges hich were necessary to her in her lattel days.’ ”

Stressing, the ease with which marriages can be broken by means of failure to comply with an order for restitution of conjugal rights, and also the. more modern way of obtaining a divorce, basing the application on the fact that the parties had agreed to separate for three years, Mr Treadwell suggested that divorces should be granted only after, the parties had made a long and real attempt to live together.

So far as maintenance was concernled, the court, in settling the amount, would always, regard the wife’s fortune and the husband’s ability to pay as well as the conduct- of the parties, and, while the court rarely gave an adulterous wife maintenance, it did so when the wife was quite unable to fend for herself; but the court set its face against compel ling a husband to continue to support a wife who had committed adultery or wilfully broken her marriage contract.

EFFECT OF EASIER. DIVORCE. • It was probably true that while in the great- majority of divorce cases there, were no children of the marriage children were a. compelling tie in married life, and the parents made a real effort to live together. This was becoming less noticeable as divorce became easier. The court would dispose of the children according to their best interests, and at times the guilty party would be given the custody of the children. The Common Law gave the children to the father, but underNew Zealand legislation the court has an unfettered discretion as to which parent should have the custody of the children and the court regarded as of paramount importance- the interests of the children concerned.

One oif the tragedies of divorce was that if there were children they usually suffered to some degree economically as well as losing the direction of both parents. So. far as providing for a divorced wife was concerned, it was interesting to note that if the husband chose later to remarry, his doing so was no ground for reducing the amount of, maintenance the first wife was entitled to.

In Mr Treadwell’s opinion the modern tendency to make divorce, easy was creating a real menace to society. Easy divorces spelt easy morals and the slackening of proper effort to make married life successful. National character suffered quicker from loose morals or easily broken marriages than probably from any other social cause.